Surviving this year’s…whatever — I should have known that it was coming. Every year around this time, I get a dose of whatever respiratory illness is going around. Most years I can get through it without much of an issue, maybe a day or two off work (I work in healthcare, so we’re more…

Why you should revisit books and articles you haven’t touched in years — For the past few weeks, I’ve been revisiting a book that’s been on my shelf since I first read it over a decade ago. The Unthinkable, a 2008 book by Amanda Ripley, was one of the first books I read as I was getting into emergency management, and one that…

Crying unashamedly in a kids’ movie — Last weekend, I went to visit my daughter who has been living with her mother halfway across the continent for over a year — a living arrangement that was not my choice, but one which I’ve learned to reluctantly live with. …

A major shakeup happened in the world of amusement parks — At first, I thought it was a joke. There was no way that the two biggest non-mouse-related amusement companies in North America would just simply merge. They’d spent years in competition with each other, winding up with a virtual stalemate. Certainly there are some things that Cedar Fair did better…

A new way to build your virtual corporation — For the longest time, I’ve been looking for a realistic logistics management game set in the real world. There are lots of semi-games with clunky UI and difficult game mechanics, but nothing that caught my eye or that scratched the itch I have to play a “serious” game. See, I…

My journey from “meh” to full-on Swiftie — I never took Taylor Swift seriously as an artist. I heard the upbeat pop songs on the radio and wrote them off as fluff and nonsense — the kind of thing an angsty teenager writes. Oh sure, they were fun to sing, and they were musically sound, but at the…

Lessons for Emergency Managers — If you are looking to make a donation to support the people affected by these fires, then please visit the incredible people over at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and make a donation through them. The news out of Maui just keeps getting worse with each passing day. While the…

I’ve answered my last callout as a firefighter — Sometime around 2018, I ran my last call on the big red trucks. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the last time I’d ever put on my bunker gear, climb into the truck and head down the road with lights and sirens going. I’d always hoped…

Medium’s latest changes have given me hope for the platform — I’ll admit that I haven’t been around here as much as I would have liked in the past few months. I’ll cut myself some slack and admit that I’ve had a lot going on, but that’s not the only reason. I’ve been a little discouraged with my results lately. It’s…